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I think I have stayed out of this conversation until now for a reason  :lol:

 

PageMaker was just fine for its day. I didn't use it for long documents though. I did use Ventura from its GEM days through Corel's acquisition. It was great for long documents and had features still lacking in layout applications today.

 

But we (I owned a seven person shop) did create a lot of work in PM. One of its features which is being bandied about here is InDesigns optical kerning (which isn't always a good choice). Optical kerning made its debut in PM. It was a good application in its day--and yes, it was on life support for too long in one sense (it outlived its usefulness once ID was up and running). But there were a lot of businesses that depended on it and for them I think Adobe made the wise choice in eventually creating version 7.

 

I did more work in QXP though. While I use VP for long documents, and I used PM for 1 or two page work, I used QXP for ads and documents that didn't make sense to do in VP. And, of course, clients pretty much dictated what we used.

 

I started the mentioned business in 1989 and in the end, we made money with 'em all and did quality work in any of them.

 

Mike

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Apple Macintosh + Adobe Laser Writer + Aldus PageMaker were the pillars of the Desktop Publishing Revolution.

 

This is how I started my love affair with the digital publishing all those years ago and I will always cherish these products and memories.

As far as I am concerned they were great. We can criticise them all we want but they were seminal in this category.

 

Let's hope that Affinity Publisher can push the envelope further, standing on the shoulders of the giants such as Adobe PageMaker, QuarkXpress, inDesign and give the tools the modern digital publishing industry needs today.

 

Hopefully we won't have to wait for it for too long now.  :P

2017 27” iMac 4.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 • Radeon Pr 580 8GB • 64GB • Ventura 13.6.4.

iPad Pro (10.5-inch) • 256GB • Version 16.4

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Wrong typography is not the fault of apps but the fault of the users. Typography was ignored suddenly and persistently with PageMaker. »Main thing is integration of digital sources«? Without that basic matter of course you could not sell such an app today. Professionals really need to be able to modify every bit of those sources easily. PM did not have all those tools that professional suppliers had.

Agreed. I was used to working with professional front-ends driving precision equipment—starting with film-strip fonts and later some of the earliest imagesetters rasterizing type with CRTs or lasers directly onto film. PM was primitive compared to $100,000 (and up) composing systems.

 

BUT…it was able to produce complete page layouts, including graphics, at a sliver of a fraction of the cost of one of those systems. They were not the pinnacle of typesetting perfection, but they were the practical expression of the WYSIWYG GUI that Lisa and Macintosh popularized.

 

I've learned and forgotten more markup languages than I care to remember. But Pagemaker and FreeHand were two monuments in the evolution of graphic arts, and need to be respected for their historical significance. (And with the other poster above, I made money on them for many years, until one was extinguished and the other was no longer viable.)

-- 

Matt

 

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This debate seems to have wandered over various side issues from the original question which was when Affinity Publisher would be available.

 

I use APh and AD and think they are both excellent programmes and fantastic value for money and have a great regard for Affinity / Serif in producing them.

 

However I do find it very disappointing that there is such procrastination by them regarding Affinity Publisher. If they started work on it when it was originally mooted them surely it should be available in at lest beta form by now?

 

I can only conclude that for whatever reason management decisions have delayed putting in sufficient resources to ensure the original availability date was kept and such thinking is the cause for continuing delays.

 

Management, you are causing a great deal of frustration among a very loyal customer base, please rethink.

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  • Staff

This debate seems to have wandered over various side issues from the original question which was when Affinity Publisher would be available.

 

I use APh and AD and think they are both excellent programmes and fantastic value for money and have a great regard for Affinity / Serif in producing them.

 

However I do find it very disappointing that there is such procrastination by them regarding Affinity Publisher. If they started work on it when it was originally mooted them surely it should be available in at lest beta form by now?

 

I can only conclude that for whatever reason management decisions have delayed putting in sufficient resources to ensure the original availability date was kept and such thinking is the cause for continuing delays.

 

Management, you are causing a great deal of frustration among a very loyal customer base, please rethink.

 

We started Affinity Publisher 5 years ago. Sometimes progress is good and sometimes not so much. Not much we can rethink at this stage.

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You have produced Affinity Designer and Photo for the Mac and Windows and now it seems that it is available for the iPad.  For some reason you appear to be ignoring those of us who have waited patiently for Publisher.  I know it is available in Windows, but I want t on my Mac, then I can dump all Windows stuff.  Why not concentrate on completing software for one platform first before digressing to others?

 

IMHO, you are getting close to alienating many customers who have been loyal to Serif for many years (I have been with you since PP3) and by your activities or rather lack thereof, driving them to other software.

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IMHO, you are getting close to alienating many customers who have been loyal to Serif for many years (I have been with you since PP3) and by your activities or rather lack thereof, driving them to other software.

 

IMNSHO, Serif have already alienated many loyal customers by ceasing development of their 'Plus' range of software. I suspect that the proportion of Serif's established user base who want to "dump all Windows stuff" is quite small.

 

An Affinity Publisher which matches the current capabilities of Serif PagePlus looks like being several years away, so a few extra months' wait for APub on Mac won't change things much.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4 (iPad 7th gen)

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Yogi9409,

I can feel your frustration but please stick along for a little longer.

Judging by the quality of the Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer, Affinity Publisher should be worth waiting for.

Hang on in there mate.

Regards

2017 27” iMac 4.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 • Radeon Pr 580 8GB • 64GB • Ventura 13.6.4.

iPad Pro (10.5-inch) • 256GB • Version 16.4

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Affinity Publisher isn't available for Windows and neither is Designer for iPad. All of these products are in development just like Affinity Publisher for the Mac. The only way to speed up the release of Publisher would be to publish it broken and I'm sure nobody would want that.

 

The Windows team are experienced in Microsoft front-end technologies so can't currently contribute to Apple OS versions of the products. The backend developers are already working on Publisher so unless we can find additional developers with similar (15 years C++ in DTP) skills then the only option is to wait until the work is complete.

 

Commeting on the lack of progress maybe a way to vent your frustration but for all the reasons above it won't change the release date.

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[…] Publisher.  I know it is available in Windows, […]

Why not concentrate on completing software for one platform first before digressing to others?

 

No, not Affinity Publisher.

They told us here “We are going to focus on completing the full suite (including Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher) on the Mac over the next 12 months. After that we will look into other platforms.” and “we’ve managed to move forward with Windows versions without hampering the development of the Mac versions at all”.

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[…] unless we can find additional developers with similar (15 years C++ in DTP) skills then the only option is to wait until the work is complete.

 

Commeting […]

 

Yes, same in graphic design. It is not easy to expand/accelerate without loosing quality.

 

“Commeting” Will foreigners understand that?  ;)

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Why can't you just let it go?

Currently, there is no Affinity Publisher, so, if you need to do DTP, use something else. When the software is ready to test, give it a go and see if you like it.

I personally am very happy with Photo & Designer and I'm sure I'll be happily using Publisher too when it comes out, but until there is actually something to talk about, it's not worth getting adjutated about it.

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  • 1 month later...

Hi. I've just joined the Forum after buying Affinity Photo for the Mac. Love it a lot although I find the interface contrast needs to be better. Find it hard to see the tools quickly. Anyway I'm posting here to say I use Adobe Indesign but because of having to rent it (which I don't like) I am waiting for the release of Affinity Publisher. I find it amazing how many cranky and agressive requests for A Publisher there are here on the Forum. I think the company know they are on to a winner if they produce one and they said they will so let sit back and wait while they get the work done.

Now Affinity please fix the interface contrast or give us more control over it please.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Expected to be in beta around the end of 2016 with a launch in 2017, from your own pages

 

​Are you now saying that this product has been pushed back, if so I have to express a degree of frustration as I have been waiting for this for some time?  IMHO Serif would have been better advised to get all the Mac products on line BEFORE introducing affinity to Windows which already has the benefit of other Serif products.

 

Serif's development process has been carefully planned and executed consistent with core philosophies, which were established when the Affinity product line was conceived about 6 years ago. One approach was to develop the Affinity applications in layers, (i.e. 1. OS integration; 2. core application functionality and features (OS independent); 3. user interface). The core component includes all the important feature and application capability. In other words the core is the same for the Mac and Windows applications. When that component is updated it is ready for both platforms. This approach has many obvious benefits over completely separate application development for each platform.

 

Given this approach, it would be profoundly ignorant for Serif to develop all Mac products 'BEFORE' Windows applications, significantly delaying Windows platform applications for marginally earlier Mac releases at the cost of a massive and possibly unrecoverable market disadvantage. Further being fully cross platform as early as possible positions the Affinity product line as a serious alternative to Adobe products, as this is a hard requirement for many who need professional grade vector and bitmap editing capabilities.

 

Serif historically has been a PC/Windows only development company. How 'Microsoft' that would be of Serif to abandon their loyal customer base on such a poorly considered strategic decision.

 

True - Windows users have the benefit of other Serif products. Though this isn't different from Mac and Windows users having the 'benefit' of existing products from other companies. Those products have been discontinued in development; there are no further upgrades. Though those products are good, they aren't professional grade like the Affinity line, different focus. Many loyal Serif customers were anxiously waiting for the Affinity products (and the anticipated Affinity Publisher) to become available, myself included.

 

In determining the validity of someone's perspective I consider if that person were in the opposite position; would they still have that same opinion? I doubt you would have this opinion if you were a Windows user.

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macOS users can be also Windows users. But some of them like macOS more and are waiting much longer than only-Windows users for Affinity Publisher.

 

All of us have been waiting ever since Affinity Publisher was announced, so we have all been waiting exactly the same length of time, regardless of which operating system(s) we use. ;)

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4 (iPad 7th gen)

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All of us have been waiting ever since Affinity Publisher was announced, so we have all been waiting exactly the same length of time, regardless of which operating system(s) we use. ;)

 

You think that Windows users are clairvoyants because in 2014 they already knew that Affinity Publisher will be developed for Windows before Serif knew it?

 

Or you think the Windows version will launch years later than the macOS version.

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You think that Windows users are clairvoyants because in 2014 they already knew that Affinity Publisher will be developed for Windows before Serif knew it?

 

Or you think the Windows version will launch years later than the macOS version.

 

Neither of the above. I merely stated that (thus far) we have all been waiting exactly the same length of time. I said nothing about how long we will end up having waited. :)

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4 (iPad 7th gen)

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HI Alfred,

The difference is in the fact that the windows users have been hoping and waiting for the Publisher for Windows, whereas  the mac users have been patiently waiting for it.  :D

2017 27” iMac 4.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 • Radeon Pr 580 8GB • 64GB • Ventura 13.6.4.

iPad Pro (10.5-inch) • 256GB • Version 16.4

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Neither of the above. I merely stated that (thus far) we have all been waiting exactly the same length of time. I said nothing about how long we will end up having waited. :)

 

Mac users are waiting for a macOS version since 2014 and Windows users since 2016 for a Windows version. Exactly the same length of time?!

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Mac users are waiting for a macOS version since 2014 and Windows users since 2016 for a Windows version. Exactly the same length of time?!

 

I didn't say anything about waiting for a particular OS version. OS X, iOS, Windows, Linux and FreeBSD users have all been waiting ever since the product was announced in 2014. Linux and FreeBSD users are likely to be in for a very long wait! :lol:

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4 (iPad 7th gen)

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I have now bought PagePlus X9 to see if I can find a workflow with AD, AP and PP until publisher is ready. One can see, that they come from the same company, so I think it will be easy to switch to APu later after being used to the Affinity apps and PP. But exchanging data between the Affinity and the Plus apps is of course by far not as elegant as within Affinity. Actually so far I think the best way to get say a page done in Designer into PP would be via a PDF. Single objects can be copied via clipboard, but a vector object turns into a pixel object of low quality when doing so. Those would have to be exported as SVG and placed in the other app from a file. 

 

Still at the legacy price range one gets a really nice app for a very decent price to fill the gap until Publisher is there. Also in general X9 has many refined features for all kinds of export formats like ePub etc. The way it opens PDFs for editing is better than my dedicated PDF editor. Thus PDF as an exchange format is not so bad at all for now. 

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